


do we simply stare at what's horrible, and forgive it?

by saintsurvivor



Series: Tumblr + Whump + MacGyver + Drabbles [4]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Ambidextrous Mac, Angst and Feels, Broken Bones, Child Abandonment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Season/Series 01, Protective Jack Dalton (MacGyver 2016), Sandbox fic, Swearing, Trust Issues, army days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29576829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/pseuds/saintsurvivor
Summary: “So,” He says, looking out the front window of the humvee, even though he’s sick of sand and being downrange. God, he’d kill for a proper Texas burger, thinks of dragging Mac down there too. “How’d you get the luck of the draw in bein’ able to use both your hands so well?” He means to use the question to get the kid outta his head, but by the way Mac’s breath hitches before steadying out, Jack thinks he might’ve done the exact opposite.
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Series: Tumblr + Whump + MacGyver + Drabbles [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119845
Comments: 15
Kudos: 87





	do we simply stare at what's horrible, and forgive it?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anguishmacgyver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anguishmacgyver/gifts).



Jack only truly notices it after.

When they’re still downrange, but when those first sixty four days are up, and Jack has re-upped even though he _promised_ his momma he was comin’ straight home after this one, because _someone_ needs to make sure his stubborn little bomb nerd isn’t gonna blow his own ass off. That’s okay though, he knows his momma will understand, because Jack apparently likes to adopt people when either they or himself aren't looking, as Elisabeth Dalton likes to laugh.

Still, he doesn’t think much of it, honestly. Why would he, it’s not a harmful habit, or even one that’s particularly annoying until it comes to fucking up something important, It’s just how notices that Mac - _yes_ , Mac, not Angus, not even Carl’s Jr, but _Mac_ , because goddamnit that boy is like _mold_ with how he grows on you, and Jack is startin’ to think he’s gonna have to spray the kid with a sort of pesticide to get him to stop clinging - generally messes with _everything._ If he gets his hands on something, he’s gonna mess with it, especially when they’ve both got some downtime or they’re in the humvee, because Jack always drives.

Mac, Jack has come to realize in a short amount of time, is a perpetual motion machine. He’s constantly fidgeting, or messing with _something_ , and that’s how Jack comes to promise himself that when they get outta there - yeah, _when,_ kid, not if, don’t be pessimistic on me now - he’ll get _shares_ in every office depot company he can get his hands on, so Mac’s hands are never empty. Seems a small price to pay, especially when the kid decides to smile, and looks like the twenty plus he actually is, rather than a guy pushing the wrong side of thirty with those mournful frowns that kinda break Jack’s entire heart.

Damn kid, he’s wreckin’ hell on Jack’s give no shit attitude and badass rep around base. Lookin’ like a damn puppy when he jogs up to Jack, his Remote Control Vehicle following behind like an even more demented puppy.

So yeah, he takes notice. Of the little movements of Mac’s steady hands, the way both of them bend and shape and twist the paperclips, even when they bite into his hands and fingers, leaving marks ad bloodied scrapes, how he even messes with the standard issue pistol that Mac never uses, never even _unholsters_ if he doesn’t have a need too. It draws Jack’s attention because it makes him think of all the times he’s seen Mac, kneeling in the sand with only Jack at his back, scoped through an AR-50, heart in his throat because if someone takes a shot at the kid, Jack won’t be able to do a damn thing. He notices partly because of how entrancing it is to watch, Mac flitting between hands, steady as anything and not even thinking about it.

Jack knows what it’s called, _ambidextrous_. Mac might’ve called him an opinionated loudmouth knuckle dragger, but they’re both smart guys. Mac just tends to be smarter than just about everyone in just about everything. Jack’s not _fully_ ambidextrous, doesn’t have the proper flexibility now in hands that have been broken, have smashed too many faces in, and he’s just never had the _want_ to be honest. Delta Force guys however are specialists, and they were ritually and religiously trained in being able to use _all_ of their weapons in both of their hands in case of injury to their main dominate hand, so yeah, Jack’s learnt how to fire and wield a collection of weapons in both his hands and just… kind of _stopped_ there.

But Mac? Mac’s a goddamn fuckin’ _genius_ with it.

The way his fingers _work_ , either in tandem or completely separate to one another, it’s kinda like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. Jack has _personally_ seen Mac fiddling with a gutted out ham radio, wrist deep in one hand, and scribbling equations on a dusty notebook with hs free hand and not even blinking. Hell, his handwriting had been fucking _beautiful_ even with his off hand. He’d ended up with a group of guys gathered around him for that, absolutely fucking entranced, just watching him with wide, almost bemused eyes until he and Jack had been called out for an IED run a few flicks southwest from FOBC.

For all that Mac is quite open with his ambidexterity, getting more _personal_ information from Mac, however, is kind of like pulling teeth, and Jack can actually confirm how _hard_ that truly is, and ugh, how unsanitary it can get, jeez people a little bit of dental hygiene goes a long way. The only reason that jack even knows about Wilt Bozer - and fuckin’ _Christ_ , what are they doing back there, namin’ very kid under the sun with some whackass, Shakespearian names? Jack’s gonna havta rename everyone he meets in LA - Mac’s best friend back in LA, is because of how much closer they’ve become, especially after Mac hadn’t let Jack die, even when Jack had called himself a lost cause. Mac had looked him in the eyes and said _no_ , had said _you’re my overwatch_ , had said _you go kaboom, I go kaboom_ , and hell, apparently airing out your dirty depression laundry to a guy whose’s probably also got depression and self esteem issues as well means that you’re bonded for fuckin’ life.

WIth everything that had happened, Jack had been lost, he’d been so far fucking gone. He’d stuck to the hamburger kid and knew that he’d fall off the ends of the earth for the stubborn bastard.

So Jack does what he normally has to do with his bomb nerd, because the little arsonist is about as prickly as a damn porcupine with an upset stomach and is _just_ as shitty with emotions, for all that he reminds Jack of the abused horses at the Dalton ranch that they usually take in for rehabilitation and then eventual, hopeful, rehoming. He comes out with it, because Mac is actually kind of a human lie detector but also thinks the worst of everyone around him ever, even when he loves them to pieces - _maybe_ because he loves them to pieces - and so will automatically think that Jack is sick of him.

(Jack kind of _really_ wants to murder everyone whose ever hurt this kid.)

“So,” He says, looking out the front window of the humvee, even though he’s sick of sand and being downrange. God, he’d kill for a proper Texas burger, thinks of dragging Mac down there too. “How’d you get the luck of the draw in bein’ able to use both your hands so well?” He means to use the question to get the kid _outta_ his head, but by the way Mac’s breath hitches before steadying out, Jack thinks he might’ve done the exact opposite.

Mac _stops_ , hands stilling in a way that Jack has come to lean means _oh shit we need to run_ , or when Jack has trodden on some sort of landmine in the kids head that he didn’t know was there, and _might_ have to do some sort of damage control, usually while blind or just plain freaking the fuck out himself.

But Mac surprises him. He gives a shaky exhale again, storing the half twisted paperclip in a pocket on his fatigue pants, only to bring out a few more that haven’t been touched. He immediately unwraps one, glistening in the too bright Afghani sun, pressing against the sharp edges and not even hissing at the bite of them. Jack sometimes thinks he uses the pain as a coping mechanism, and though he’d rather Mac didn’t, s’long as he ain’t hurting himself properly, everyone needs a coping mechanism out here, and Jack’s aren’t much better, so honestly, what kinda leg does he have to stand on?

“My dad,” Mac says, and he tips a wry smile Jack’s way, helmet slipping a little from where the little shit hasn’t strapped in, thinking he’s John Wayne or some shit. “Before he left, he, ah…”

“Kid, you know you can always tell me to fuck off,” Jack says, slanting Mac a look as drums his fingers on the steering wheel, because sometimes Mac doesn’t always know that. Jack also _really_ wants to kind of murder everyone who taught Mac that his boundaries and wants don’t matter, but then he also thinks that might be a whole load of people he has to kill. That’s okay, Jack’s got no issues with that, honestly. “You know I ain’t gonna get my feelin’s hurt.”

“Yeah,” Mac grins, and it’s kind of a hit to the gut, because _Christ_ , Mac is what, about twenty? Twenty one? He signed up straight on his eighteen birthday, Jack remembers, he’d got into MIT early - and that still blows Jack’s fuckin’ mind as easily as stepping on a pressure plate did - and he’s nearing the end of his three year tour. He looks so damn _young_ when he smiles like that, and it reminds Jack that he’s not just protecting an EOD specialist, but he’s protecting a damn kid too. “But I wanna tell ya’, and normally you’re telling me to ‘ _open up, Angus, you’re like a damn steel trap, don’t you know God gave you a voicebox for a reason?’_ ”

“Hey!” Jack laughs, even as he slaps Mac on the knee. “Now, I do _not_ sound like that, Foghorn Leghorn, and it’s a Dalton tradition to annoy everyone we meet into openin’ up, and kiddo, honestly, sometimes I think they put gum in your mouth, the way you keep it shut.”

Mac laughs too, grinning even wider that Jack, and he leans his knee into Jack’s fleeting touch before he goes back to messing with his little paperclips, eyes darting between Jack’s and the body warm metal. 

“That doesn’t even make sense, man, but I guess that’s what I get for bein’ partnered up with a Tex.”

Jack chances taking a hand off the wheel to wag a finger in the kids face. 

“Now, don’t you be bashin’ the great state of Texas, young padawan, you dunno what you’re missin’, especially since I’m gonna be draggin’ you there for some of my momma’s famous grits, you’re gonna be eatin’ your words,” Before Mac even has a chance to absorb the words though, Jack is dragging him back on track. “Now, c’mon, cough it up man, give all your woes to Ol’ Jackie.”

“First,” Mac says, very seriously, knocking his knee back into Jack’s. His face, when Jack looks over at him, his comical. “I thought we agreed never to talk about ourselves in the third person?”

Jack just laughs, feels how his eyes crinkle around the edges, knocking his knee back into Mac’s just to feel the touch of it. Jack thinks it grounds Mac as much as it does him.

“Anyway, about my hands, I ah, I broke my right arm when I was, _God?_ Musta been when I was about eight, I think. It wasn’t too bad thankfully, clean break, but I fucked it good and proper for a few weeks, couldn’t do anything like I used to, and well, it was my dominant hand.”

All of a sudden, and Jack can’t explain it, he gets a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he has the biggest feeling that he knows _exactly_ where this is going, and that he’s gonna hate it _immensely_. But he says nothing, just keeps switching his gaze from Mac’s hands, that are still slowly reshaping the thin metal of the paperclip, but have the tiniest tremor running through the, enough that only his fingers are shaking, but it alarms Jack more than it probably should. 

“Dad was adamant that I kept working, y’know? Said that because I broke it while messin’ around with Boze that it was my own fault, that I shoulda been more careful because it was gonna negatively affect everything if I didn’t learn what I was learning, or that I couldn’t do the experiments Dad had lined up. Didn’t have time to babysit, I guess.”

Jack has to sit there for the longest moment, hands strangling the steering wheel hard enough that he hears the leather of it creaking.

“So what? He _made_ you do everything, even with your busted up arm?” Jack is very glad that he’s got a strangling grip on the steering wheel, because otherwise he’d think he’d find a way to strangle James MacGyver even when they’re all the way in Afghanistan, and Mac has said over and over that he doesn’t know where his old man is. Jack’ll find him, he’s got enough favours to cash in, heck, Matty Webber’s like a dog with a bone.

Mac though, Mac _shrugs_ , and somehow the way that he’s so casual about it, so dismissive about it, just makes it all the worse for Jac. As if Mac doesn’t quite understand that dads don’t do that, that dads don’t expect their kids to ignore their pain and their own needs just because they said too. Jack has the sudden thought that it’s probably good his own pops is dead and buried, if only because he’d have been hairing off to shoot James MacGyver too.

“Essentially?” Mac shrugs again, and the paperclip in his hands is almost finished. One last bend into place, and Jack’s stomach _clenches_ when he sees that the kid has crafted the thin metal into a crude hammer, bulky for all the slender lines it’s made out of. Like he’s been bent and hammered into shape, like his father was the blacksmith, and Mac was the weapon he was forging. “I mean, don’t get me, I hated it at the time, but I can’t complain now, can I?” Mac wriggles his free few fingers, and he laughs, but there’s an edge to it that has Jack’s back up. It reeks of an old age pain that Jack wants to wipe away, wants to tuck mac beneath his shoulder and hide him away from the world and from anyone who’d ever want to hurt him.

Mac is a soldier, however, a grown ass man for all that he’s only twenty one, for all that he’s the same age as Riley, because this twenty one year old has seen more things than most, probably more things than Jack kind of wants to think about.

“Best of all was when he took me camping,” Mac is saying, but Jack is hearing it as if he’s got cotton wool in his ears, or like he’s slowly sinking beneath the ocean. It’s like that since Jack asked, Mac’s walls have broken, on _this_ subject at least. Like he can’t help but to spill everything that makes Jack want to gouge out his own ears and _kill_ Mac’s father. “Like yeah, Harry - my grandad that is - had shoved me in the middle of the woods by myself for two days when I was twelve to teach me how to build a fire, but Dad, jeez, he said that if I wasn’t able to catch _and_ skin my own food, that I wouldn’t eat for the entire two weeks we were out there. Pretty sure I nearly starved, almost sliced off a coupla’ fingers too, no doubt, but I managed it.”

That-

That is so damn horrifying on so, _so_ many different levels, and don’t think Jack hasn’t picked up on the comment about the kids grandaddy which is _just_ as horrifying, but Jack’s kind of too busy cursing his own imagination. Jack’s never really _seen_ a picture of bay Mac, but he can guess what his bomb nerd used to look like as a kid, he’s still a damn kid really, for all that Jack knows his a grown adult, and the thought of that Mac, of _eight year old_ Mac, with his little broken arm in it’s cast and his camping clothes, alone out in the wilderness with only a father who honestly didn’t give a shit about his _own kid_. His own kid who had to watch as his father caught and skinned and ate his own food and didn’t let his kid have any because of some sort of twisted, unneeded independence he was trying to teach eight year old Mac-

Jack has to close his eyes briefly, hiding the glassiness of them. The leather steering wheel, having already started cracking beneath the strength of his grip, gives a creaking moan at the abuse. _God_ , no wonder the kid is so fucked up.

“You-you know that was wrong, right?” Jack has to ask, has to make sure, because even if Mac gives the answer that Jack is dreading he’s gonna give, at least Jack can tell him _now_ , that that man didn’t deserve a sweet kid like Mac. “What your daddy did to you, you know that shouldn’t have ever happened.”

Mac doesn’t say anything for the longest time, long enough that Jack thinks he’s finished the conversation, and though Jack doesn’t regret or think that anything is wrong with what he’s said, maybe he could have said it with a _bit_ more tact. But then, Mac sighs, long and low. He’s discarded the crude hammer replica he’d twisted into being, but the new paperclip that he’s messing with doesn’t seem like it’s gonna make Jack any happier.

“I’m startin’ to realize that,” Mac mumbles, and he shakes his head hard enough for his ACH to quake a little on his head. His eyes are solely focused on his paperclip, those thin fingers constantly moving. When they finally see the gate for FOBC, there’s an air of slight relief around the kid. “I suppose thinkin’ about the good that I’ve been able to do with it kind of outweighs how awful it felt in that moment.”

There’s silence for a while as Jack carefully steers their rig into the designated base. He thinks he’s starting to understand a little more why the kid is as fucked up as he is. Then, when Mac is gathering his gear, cracking open his EOD kit and double checking everything is there, paperclip balanced on the dashboard, Jack slowly puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes enough that Mac looks at him, wide eyed, traces of shadows there that Jack thinks he still doesn’t fully understand. He gives into the urge to tug Mac forward, bumping their ACH’s together for just a moment, lets Mac retreat back into his own space.

“Just because it hurt doesn’t mean you have to try and find the good in it,” Jack says quietly, because whilst he can understand trying to find the good in suffering, sometimes it’s just suffering, sometimes it just _hurts_. “You don’t need to justify anything you went through, or think that it was okay you went through it because you’ve managed to turn it into something good. It _hurt_ you, is _still_ hurtin’ you, and sometimes, as much as you don’t wanna, you gotta feel that hurt.”

“But I don’t want to.” Mac says quietly, and his voice sounds so fucking _young_ , cracking right down the middle, just like Jack’s damned heart.

“You’re not alone, kid,” Jack says, and he reaches out a hand, patting Mac on the knee. He can feel the tension in the corded muscles there, but Mac doesn’t flinch away, instead, like before, he leans into it. “You ain’t gotta be in the hurt locker by yourself, no more. You’ve got people at your back that can carry that weight.”

For a long moment, Jack thinks Mac is going to just swan right out of the rig, is gonna leave Jack there, maybe even demand a new Overwatch with how close to cracking Mac’s walls Jack is. But Mac is always surprising him, reaching out to grasp the half formed paperclip. It only takes a second for it to come to life, and then Mac is pressing it, covered, into Jack’s palm.

“What if _I am_ the weight?” Mac asks, and there’s something so raw and _hurt_ in that tone that Jack can’t say anything, and by time he’s managed to unlodge his heart out of his throat, Mac has slipped from their rig, ghost like even with how the sun is beating down on him, for all that it should be impossible for the kid to slink away like that.

Jack looks down at the little paperclip creation Mac had pressed quietly into his hand, and feels his heart give way, just a little bit, wondering what it would take to make the kid realize that he’s anything but what he thinks he is.

He tucks them both, the crude hammer and the little anvil, into one of his pockets. They seem to weigh as heavily as they would’ve had they been the real thing.

Damn fool kid’s gonna be the death of him, someday.


End file.
